This Is Our Time
by tobinfic
Summary: It's Kensi's time of the month, and Deeks is being surprisingly cool about it. When he's not being hot, that is.


She had counted down the days on the calendar she kept stuffed in the medicine cabinet in her bathroom, the cheap paper curling with the moisture and clammy to the touch. She'd been lucky recently; her last three periods had been average – a few mild cramps, the usual feeling of bloat and heaviness, crying when her favourite got voted off _Top Model_.

But as soon as she woke up and felt the vicious cramps kick in, she knew she was in for one of her bad weeks. She'd prepared herself just in case – one of the extra heavy flow tampons already in place, the night-time pad in her underwear, extra towels laid over the mattress, under her sheet to protect it in case she flooded. But it wasn't quite enough, and she started her day by scrubbing the crimson stickiness from her hands after she changed and cleaned herself up and loading up the washing machine with laundry bleach to get the stains from her bedlinen.

She debated about calling in sick, but she couldn't bring herself to tell her team that she had 'women's problems'. She could lie and say she had the 'flu, but you couldn't do that every month. Something rebelled inside her at giving the rest of her incredibly masculine team the chance to make any jokes at her expense. She was just going to have to knock back some ibuprofen and get on with it.

She put extra make up on that day, hoping the bronzing powder would convince everybody that she was fine. She was the first one into the bullpen, and got started on the stack of paperwork that had built up in her in-tray. Maybe if she just powered through it, she could take off a little early, take as hot a bath as she could stand and try and sleep it off.

She lasted forty five minutes before her partner arrived, clearly straight from an early morning spent at the beach, surfing. His hair was still damp and he smelled like salt water and cologne. Her sense of smell was usually pretty sharp, but days like today suddenly made it more so. Deeks smelled heavenly, and all she wanted to do was plant her nose in his neck and spend all day breathing him in.

But that sort of thing was frowned upon in the workplace, ever since Nell and Eric and the incident in ops that was never spoken about in public.

And Deeks may suddenly wonder why his partner was molesting him. Not that she hadn't had idle thoughts about molesting him before, but somehow they got worse around this time of the month, which was just _wonderful_, because what man wouldn't want to make love to a woman who was bleeding like a stuck pig?

"Kensi?" His voice was full of concern. "Kens, are you sick?"

"No," she snapped irritably. "I'm fine."

"Then you are sick," he said firmly. "You only say you're fine when you're not."

"I'm not sick," she said again. "I may not be at one hundred percent, but I'm not…Deeks, what are you doing?"

He'd got up from his desk and perched on hers, resting the back of his hand against her forehead.

"Well, you're not hot," he said, then grinned apologetically. "Well, you are, but not in that way."

"I'll be okay," she said, reluctantly moving away from his gentle touch. His hands were cool and they felt good on her head. She could feel a headache starting to gather strength in her temples.

"You should go home," he said, looking worried. "I'll call Hetty."

"Don't bother Hetty," Kensi said grabbing hold of his wrist. "I've taken some tablets, they'll kick in soon."

"Have you eaten?" he asked, looking around for signs of packaging.

Kensi's stomach rolled.

"I can't handle food right now," she told him, and his expressive blue eyes widened in alarm.

"That's it, I'm getting Hetty," he said firmly. "Hetty!" he called. "Come and tell Kensi to go home, she's sick."

"I'm not sick," Kensi hissed.

"You look ill," Hetty said, appearing behind them and making them both jump. "I saw you walk in from the parking lot this morning, and you were moving awfully slowly, Miss Blye."

"I'll be fine when the painkillers kick in, Hetty," Kensi said, pleading. Then a cramp bit into her viciously and she gasped, clutching her lower abdomen.

"Ah," Hetty said gently. "I see."

"You do?" Deeks asked, looking confused.

"I'll be okay, the painkillers…" Kensi began.

"Obviously aren't working," Hetty finished. "Go home, Miss Blye."

"But Hetty…"

"Home," Hetty insisted, using her firmest tone. "Mr Deeks will drive you."

"He doesn't need to drive me," Kensi insisted, but this time Deeks cut her off.

"I'll take our paperwork from the last case with us," he said, jumping up and stuffing the files on his desk into a messenger bag, then unplugging his laptop and adding that as well. "That way you can still work, Miss Stoic."

"Excellent," Hetty said, clapping her hands. "Go on, scat."

Kensi glared at Deeks as he started to gather up her things as well.

"I need to go to the bathroom," Kensi muttered as she grabbed her purse. "I'll meet you by the car."

He just nodded, staring after her as she stalked away, confusion and concern warring for dominance on his face.

They were a few blocks away from Kensi's apartment when she spotted the supermarket on the corner.

"Stop here," she motioned. "I need to get a few things."

"I can get them," he said immediately. "I'll take you home and come back."

"There's no need," she said sharply.

"There's every need," he said stubbornly. "You should be at home, resting."

"God, Deeks, I'm not dying," she spat, her anger made worse by the pain. "I've just got…"

She stopped herself from saying the words just in time. If there was any spare blood in her body, it was in her cheeks as a blush. Her father had raised her alone after her mother died, and he'd done an amazing job, but there were still some things that terrified six feet two, one hundred and eighty pound marines, and the female biology was right at the top of the list. When Kensi had started her first period she'd been completely unprepared. The school nurse had had to lend her clean underwear and give her instructions about pads and tampons. From then on whenever she and her father had gone grocery shopping he'd avoided looking at the brightly coloured packages she'd put in the shopping cart, and she had never spoken about how she felt once a month.

Some things, Kensi had learned, men just weren't comfortable with.

"You've got what? Your period?" Deeks finished blithely, and she actually gasped.

"Oh come on, is this what all this is about? You need more tampons, fine, just tell me what sort you need and I'll come and get them."

Deeks drove resolutely past the turning for the supermarket.

"How…how did you know?" she asked quietly, her head turned away from him.

Deeks shrugged. "It's not like I keep a calendar or anything. But you stuff yourself with carbs for three days every month, and for two days before that you're like a bear with a sore head. It's not hard to figure out. I've never seen you like this though."

"I'm like a…I eat _carbs_?" Kensi demanded.

"If it's got a potato in it somewhere, it's fair game," Deeks said, a small smile on his face.

"Oh God, how embarrassing," Kensi said, hiding her face in her hands.

Deeks pulled up in the parking lot of her apartment building.

"No, it's not," he said gently. "Kensi, look at me."

"No," she said, screwing her eyes shut. "I'm mortified. Leave me alone."

"That's never gonna happen," he said mildly. "Look, there's nothing to be embarrassed about here."

"Oh, says you," Kensi said, sneaking a peek at him. "You're not the one…God_ damn_ it."

She put her hand to her abdomen and winced.

"I can guarantee that if I, or Sam, or Callen, had to do this every month, we'd spend all our time shrieking in agony and refusing to come in to work," Deeks said kindly. "I think you're awesome, Kensi."

"It's not always this bad," Kensi said, rubbing her stomach. "It hasn't been for a while. But this morning I woke up and…"

"And you needed not to come in to work," Deeks said firmly. "But you did, and now you're home again. Tell me what you need."

"More ibuprofen," Kensi said, defeated. "And…"

"What colour?" Deeks said, cutting her off.

"The orange ones in the blue box. The big box," Kensi clarified. "And pads."

"The ones in the blue pouches? The night time ones?"

"Yeah," she said, reaching for her bag. "I've got some money here…"

"Give it to me later," he said dismissively. "Go in, run a hot bath, go soak for a bit. That helps, right?"

"Yeah," she said, looking at him strangely. "How do you know?"

"My mom had them really bad," he explained. "My dad was always kind of a dick to her, so once I got old enough to understand what was happening, I'd run to the store to get what she needed. She used to take a lot of hot baths."

Kensi nodded, and stayed silent. Deeks didn't talk about his father much, and rarely mentioned his mother. Telling her even this tiny scrap of information was important, she could tell.

"You need this," Kensi said, reaching into her bag again. "It's a spare key to my apartment. Keep it," she added. "You never know when you might need it."

"Okay," he said softly. "Go have your bath. I'll be as quick as I can."

For once, Kensi did as she was told. She went straight to the bathroom, put her clothes in the hamper, and ran a deep, hot bath. She'd have to shower immediately afterwards; she never felt completely clean if she bathed while bleeding, as irrational as that was. But not long after she immersed herself in the hot water she felt the cramping ease up and she sighed with relief.

By topping up the water, she lay in the bath tub for forty five blissful minutes. She heard a key turn in the lock and Deeks call her name.

"I'm in the bathroom," she yelled back. "I'll be out soon."

"Stay there!" he ordered, but there was no way she could do that, not without him lurking unchaperoned in her home. She pulled the plug, drew back the shower curtain and switched the flow of the water from the faucets to the shower head and briskly scrubbed herself with the mint shower gel that she kept especially for this time of the month. It always made her feel clean, and as the range had a matching shampoo, she used that as well. She used the last tampon in the box, and spared a grateful thought for Deeks' kindness to her.

In her bedroom she found her largest, most comfortable and unflattering pair of panties and fitted a pad into them. She pulled an old pair of black sweatpants out of a drawer and selected an oversized t-shirt that once upon a time had belonged to her father. Her comfort clothes, guaranteed to make even her slender body look massive and frumpy.

_What the hell_, she thought. _My partner has just bought me tampons. It's not like he's gonna want to sleep with me now, anyway_.

She stepped back into the living room and stared in amazement. At the back of the room, where it turned into an open plan kitchen/dining area, her partner was filling her cupboards with piles of carbohydrate based junk food. The oven was on, and she could smell something delicious warming up. A large bag, stuffed with candy bars, sat on the counter, as yet unpacked.

"Your tampons are in that bag there," he said, gesturing to a smaller bag on the counter. She peeked inside and smiled as she realised he had got the right ones.

"Thanks," she said awkwardly. She picked the bag up, and heard a rattling noise. She pulled a small tub from the bag and looked at it quizzically. She knew what it was as soon as she saw the label.

"Deeks, these are your pain pills the doctor prescribed after you got shot," she said accusingly. "You promised me you were taking these."

"And I was," Deeks said, opening the oven to check on the contents inside. "But I didn't need them all, and thought I'd keep them for the next time I got hit by a car, or shot. But you seem to need them more that I do, so I thought I'd bring them over."

Kensi watched as Deeks hunted out plates and forks, and pulled a baking sheet full of delicious, thick, golden fries from the oven and shake them onto the plates.

"There," he said, pleased. "Brunch."

The smell was so good her stomach growled. He grinned.

"There's vinegar in the top cupboard," she said, picking up one of the plates.

"Heathen," he joked. "Ruining good fries. What's wrong with ketchup?"

"Nothing," she explained, a forkful of food already in her mouth. "But there are…times when I like tangy flavours."

"Ah," Deeks said, understanding blooming on his face. He passed her the vinegar and watched her douse her food in it.

"Oh God, that's so good," she moaned, taking another bite. She watched with narrowed eyes as Deeks snuck a fry from her plate and tentatively chewed it before screwing his face up.

"Ketchup's on the shelf below," she said. "I can't believe you're eating this now."

"I was up early catching some serious waves this morning," he said, shaking the ketchup bottle and squirting some on the side of his plate. "I worked up an appetite."

They ate standing up at the breakfast bar, talking about Deeks' self proclaimed prodigious surfing skills. As the warm food filled her stomach, Kensi felt herself relax slightly.

"Have you had enough?" Deeks asked, collecting the plates to rinse in the sink.

"Plenty, thank you," Kensi said, stepping in to take the plates from him. "You don't have to clean up too. I can do that."

"I know. But humour me," he said, smiling. "It's not often I get to be a knight in shining armour."

"You'd better lose that armour the next time you get on your board," Kensi said, laughing. "You'll sink."

She went through to the living room and started to pull the files he had brought with him from the office out of his bag. He soon dropped down beside her on the couch and took some of the files from her. They worked quietly, not speaking except to ask a question about a previous case, (Kensi) or how best to phrase "I provided back up while Sam pulverised three terrorists with his bare hands and secret SEAL ninja moves" (Deeks).

After three hours and the last file finished, Kensi began to feel the cramps coming back. The ibuprofen she had taken earlier was wearing off. Deeks was clearly keeping a very close eye on her, as he jumped up from the couch and came back with a glass of water and the bottle of heavy-duty painkillers.

"I don't know," Kensi said warily. "I've had them before. They make me pretty loopy."

"Don't worry about it," Deeks said, shaking his head. "You don't have anywhere to be, and I'll be here to keep an eye on you. Please, Kensi?"

He had done so much for her that day. Taking the tablet really was the least she could do, and it would make her cramps disappear.

She took the tablet he proffered and swallowed it with a glass of water.

"Ech," she said afterwards. "I hate taking tablets."

"I have something to take the taste away," he said with a smile. He went back into the kitchen and came back with a multipack of chips and a handful of candy bars.

"I know you said you liked carbs right now," he said, sitting back down again. "But my mom would go crazy for candy bars so, I got you some."

"Is that a Dove bar?" Kensi asked, plucking it from the rest. "You're a genius, Deeks."

He said nothing, just smiled brilliantly at her while she bit into her bar and sighed with bliss.

"Let's watch a movie," he said after she polished off the rest of the bar.

"They're in the cabinet," she said, pointing at a big drawer.

"This isn't your full selection," he said after a moment's browsing. He turned to her, frowning slightly. "Come on Kens, 'fess up. Where's the rest?"

"I don't know what you mean," Kensi said, lying through her teeth.

"This is the DVD selection you let people see that you think makes you look cool," Deeks explained. "Look – _Indiana Jones_, classics except the fourth, what the hell were they thinking, _The Godfather_, that's there to reassure dates you're not into chickflicks and what's this? _Amelie_? Seriously, have you actually watched that more than once? This isn't a real movie collection, Kensi. There's not one bad eighties movie in here, not one movie that you loved as a kid and is a guilty pleasure now!"

Kensi couldn't help it; she giggled at his mock-outrage. She would swear until her dying day it was the fault of the pain pill. She gestured to a cardboard box on a bookshelf.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, jumping up and pulling off the lid. "Your true self, in all its DVD glory!"

He explored the collection, snorting and poking fun at her collection of cheesy John Hughes movies, her much-watched copy of _Soapdish_, so bad it's good, her comprehensive Cary Grant collection.

"You know his real name was Archibald, don't you," he muttered as he discarded a copy of _The Philadelphia Story_. "Can't see why chicks go wild for a dead guy called Archibald. Oh, Kensi. Now we've hit the motherload!"

He waved a DVD at her.

"I knew there was a reason we were partners!"

His smile was contagious. She couldn't help but respond, despite feeling bloated and nasty and ever so slightly spacey.

"Goonies never say die!" he told her, scrambling to put her special anniversary edition of the DVD in the player. "Awesome film. Stephen Spielberg producing, Chris Columbus writing, Richard Donner directing – a true classic. This should be taught in schools. Most awesome movie of all time, ever."

"I always wanted to be a Goonie," Kensi found herself saying. "On the base, a group of us used to pretend. Go about on our bikes, looking for adventures."

She blinked. Where had that nugget of information come from?

"I bet you were the cute cheerleader," Deeks teased, settling back into the couch with her. He sat very close, so close she could feel the warmth from his bare arms and smell that wonderful salt water scent.

"That was Emily Pickett, the colonel's daughter," Kensi said glumly. "She always got to be her. I had to be other girl, the one with the glasses."

She sighed, the forgotten slights of childhood coming back to haunt her.

"I bet you were the big brother," she said, as the Fratellis sped along the beach in the 4x4 race. "Looking out for Ray, trying to keep you both out of trouble."

Deeks laughed and slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

"I was more like Mouth," he told her. "Full of the fast talk, getting up in people's faces."

Kensi let herself be pulled close. She moved an arm across his waist, playing with the soft cotton of the dreadful plaid shirt he insisted on wearing. They put their feet up on the coffee table and Kensi was struck by how comfortable the whole situation was. She wasn't by nature a snuggler, but somehow it felt right to be tucked in tight to his side.

"Mouth saved Stef," Kensi said a little later, apropos of nothing. "She says it right at the end. But the scene got cut from the movie."

"Story of my life," Deeks snorted, and hugged her a little tighter.

Kensi could feel the pain pill kicking in; her cramps lessened and then disappeared and it got harder and harder to keep her eyes open. She tried valiantly; this was probably her favourite movie of all time, and she liked watching it with Deeks. He didn't mock the child actors or the eighties special effects. He just pointed out his favourite parts and laughed when she did.

Deeks noticed her eyelids fluttering just after Chester Copperpot's skeleton scared the crap out of the kids.

"You should be in bed," he said gently. "You're falling asleep."

"No I'm not," Kensi muttered, eyes shut. "I'm watching the movie."

"Sure you are," he chuckled. "All right then, hold on."

He tugged and pulled at her until he had manoeuvred them both into lying down on the couch. Kensi's couch wasn't particularly wide, so she ended up mostly sprawled across him, his arm draped over her waist, her nose level with his collarbone.

She dozed, waking up every so often for a few minutes to watch the movie, then the painkiller made her drift off again. When she woke up for the third time she felt Deeks play with her hair, and she hummed in pleasure.

"S'nice," she said into his chest. "Don't stop."

"I won't," he replied, his voice tinged with something that she couldn't quite place; her head was fuzzy and she knew she wasn't quite with it.

The movie played on in the background, and when she woke up again, the evil Mama Fratelli was making the kids walk the plank. Deeks had one hand in her hair and one resting gently on the small of her back.

They watched as the flame-haired cheerleader was forced to jump over the side of the ship, and how Brand threw himself heroically overboard to rescue her.

"I always thought that was kind of dumb," Kensi said, as the boy tugged the girl to safety. "I mean, she could swim. His little brother was on the ship and he abandoned him to rescue the girl."

"But it's romantic," Deeks teased, as the two teens shared a hesitant first kiss.

Kensi snorted into his shirt, which clearly tickled as Deeks jerked under her.

They watched as Sloth made his triumphant entrance, diverting his family so the kids could jump to safety. Deeks laughed again as Stef punched Mama Fratelli right in the mouth on her way past.

"See?" he said softly. "That's why you always had to be her. There's no way Emily Prentiss was awesome enough to do that. I could totally see ten year old you doing that."

Kensi smiled.

"I still think that kiss was stupid, though," she said through a yawn, trying to hide her pleasure at his words. "It looks cool, but it's totally unsexy. That water would have been freezing, they were scared for their lives, there were skeletons everywhere…"

"Kissing in unsexy places can be hot," Deeks argued mildly. "It's not the situation, it's the people."

"No it's not," Kensi scoffed.

"It is too!" he said, exasperation warring with humour in his voice. "We're in your messy living room sacked out on the couch, surrounded by candy bar wrappers and NCIS paperwork, watching a kid's movie from the 1980s and I could kiss you so much right now, and it'd be the hottest thing on the planet."

He stopped abruptly, and from her position draped across his chest she could tell that he'd drawn in his breath suddenly.

She struggled up onto one elbow to look him blearily in the eye. He had his nervous face on, the one that usually preceded a meeting with Hetty. But he looked determined, she noted. And he hadn't stopped playing with her hair.

"Don't kiss me yet," she blurted, the words coming from nowhere and just arriving on her lips. "I'm not sexy right now."

"Liar," he said affectionately. "You're always sexy."

He gave her a dopey grin which she could feel herself return.

"But you _are_ hopped up on painkillers right now, so I'm gonna wait for you to sleep it off," he continued.

"I'm gonna want to kiss you when I wake up," she warned him, no longer in control of anything she said. Maybe he had a point about that pain pill.

"And I'm gonna hold you to that," promised, pressing a single chaste kiss to her temple. "But, just go to sleep, Kens."

"Be there when I wake up?" she asked, clutching at the soft cotton of the shirt that she was going to have to burn as soon as she got it off him. It was truly that hideous.

"Always," he promised.

Deep in her heart, she believed him. So she closed her eyes, and fell asleep. And later, when she woke, he was right where he said he would be.


End file.
